With recent medical and scientific advances, the average life span of people is prolonged, and we are witnessing an aging society. On the other hand, owing to changes in eating habits and living environment, environmental contamination, viruses, and germs, new diseases and infections have been found. This has provoked anxiety among people about health. In so-called advanced nations, in particular, an increase in the number of people who suffer lifestyle-related illnesses such as diabetes and hyperpiesia raises a problem.
An increase in the number of medical facilities has not kept pace with an increase in the number of such patients. In addition, in some areas, there are no medical facilities that allow people to regularly visit. Under the circumstances, concerns are rising about future measures including policies against such situations.
Remote medical systems and home health management systems have therefore been proposed, which allow the aged and people suffering lifestyle-related diseases and chronic diseases to receive diagnoses from doctors and perform daily health management.
A typical arrangement of such systems is that a target individual installs a terminal at his/her home, and connects it to a server in a medical facility or center through a communication line such as the Internet so as to input/transmit answers for a medical inquiry and measurement values such as a blood pressure and bodily temperature from the terminal. A nurse or doctor then checks the data collected in the server and returns information indicating the presence/absence of an abnormality or message.
To manage such a medical system, clinical records (clinical charts) of users electronically recorded as electronic clinical charts and a medical database storing the data of the electronic clinical charts, various measurement values, and the like are required. Various proposals have been made about such electronic clinical charts and medical databases from various fields.
Electronic clinical charts, in particular, are effective in preventing medical malpractices and medication errors, which have become problems. A great deal of attention has been paid to an electronic clinical chart as a means for satisfying the patient's right to know by disclosing its contents to the patient or patient's family.
Terminals used in the above medical systems include a general personal computer having a display screen and input device and a dedicated terminal capable of measuring a specific value such as a blood pressure.
When a device such as a general personal computer is to be used as a terminal, settings for the device and its operation method become complicated. This limits people who can use such terminal.
Assume that dedicated terminals are used. In this case, if a user suffers a plurality of diseases or ailments and needs to perform various measurements, he/she must use a plurality of dedicated terminals. This is cumbersome operation and also increases burden on the user.
In a conventionally proposed medical system, if, for example, a user suffers a chronic disease or the like and needs to periodically take a medicine, the user must administer and manage a medicine by himself/herself, and there is no support function on the system side. For this reason, the burden of administration and management of medicines on users cannot be reduced.
More specifically, of diabetic patients who are currently on increase, patients suffering type I insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus must periodically take insulin because no insulin is secreted from the pancreas. Administration of insulin is currently performed by subcutaneous injection. This imposes great physical and mental burden on patients.
To reduce the burden on such patients, a pen-type syringe having a thin needle that makes the patients feel little pain has been developed. Type I diabetic patients often work like able-bodied persons except that the patients must periodically take insulin. It is difficult for such a patient to take insulin at proper times because he/she feels dislike to make an inject in the presence of others even with a pen-type syringe.
Under the circumstances, a method of discharging a medicine in the form of droplets and making them reach the lungs together with inhaled air, thereby administering the medicine through the lungs instead of injection.
In such an inhalation scheme, however, since the amount of air inhaled and inhalation rate vary among patients, it is difficult to efficiently administer medicines to all patients. For this reason, this scheme is no practical use.
Assume that patients can easily administer medicines by themselves. In this case, problems are posed concerning how to handle an instance where a patient takes a wrong medicine or does not take a proper amount of medicine or at wrong intervals.
A terminal used in the conventional medical system is designed to be installed in user's home but not to be carried. If, therefore, the condition of a patient becomes worse or suddenly changes on the road, a proper treatment cannot be provided.
This also applies to insurance systems in operation. More specifically, in receiving a medical consultation or treatment in a medical facility, a patient generally presents a health insurance card in Japan or an ID card issued by an insurance company in the USA. However, the contents written on such an insurance card or ID card do not include any necessary information for an emergency.
For example, the contents written on a health insurance card in Japan include only the name of the patient himself/herself, the names of dependents, address, the name and location of company, the type of insurance, insurance card number, and medical treatment record (brief clinical history), but do not include any information about a clinical chart, prescription, and the like. The contents written on an ID card in the USA include only an individual number, insurance details, and the like but do not include any information about a clinical chart or prescription either.
For this reason, demands have arisen for a method of accurately and efficiently performing medical consultation and treatment on the basis of a database for managing information about individual clinical charts and medical information as electronic data.